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#247 Mavis Appleyard Gone Off Chocolates

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There's not much alcohol in them, I can assure you, because I ate the full box and I was still stood up!

Mavis Appleyard

We have a raffle at the group every Friday and one week our friend had brought some little Baileys chocolates "only three for a pound from a little new supermarket that's opened".

So me and another friend thought we’d go and have a look. We went in and I see the same chocolates that our friend had bought and there were priced at three for £10. So I asked the chap and he says;

"No, they're three for £10."

"Three for £10 pound?!" I said "but I heard they were three for a pound?"

He said "No, they're three for £10, because they've got alcohol in".

There's not much alcohol in them, I can assure you, because I ate the full box and I was still stood up! So we had another walk around, I thought, well everything's out of date. I'm not bothered about out of date stuff, I'll eat anything, but not if it's got milk or cheese in. So I go further round and I see these lovely boxes of chocolates. I thought what lovely presents - they were nearly a year out of date! And they were £7.50 each!

He says "So you don't want them?"

I told a lie, "No, we're going to the dentist, but we will call back."

But I can assure you, we didn't go back.

Precis

The beauty of being in a company of older performers is the kaleidoscopic range of real-life experiences that they bring to the table. These experiences cover everything from the vivid and strange world of childhood, to the unexpected late awakenings of old age. Take our newest batch of anecdotes, for example. These new stories are delightfully diverse: from the earthly, sensual joy of baking bread, to the cosmic dreams of outer space; from an unnerving encounter with a poltergeist, to the risqué glories of adult pleasure products and burlesque. Running as a rich theme throughout, is the possibility of love, and the simple wonder of human connection. As one writer tells us, in her story of funeral rites and flirting, “Amidst death, life goes on”, and indeed it does, delightfully so.